Last update - 17:55 01/06/2005

Ya'alon: Israel to face terror war after pullout

By Ari Shavit, Haaretz Correspondent

Reproduced with permission from ©Haaretzdaily
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/582916.html

Moshe Ya'alon, leaving the post of army chief Wednesday after three years, warned in an interview with Haaretz that unless Israel commits to further withdrawals after this summer's disengagement from Gaza, the pullout will be followed by an outbreak of renewed violence

Prior to handing his position to successor Dan Halutz, Ya'alon also said in the interview that the establishment of a Palestinian state would lead to war at some stage.

In a Wednesday ceremony at the Prime Minister's Office marking the transition, Ya'alon said that it was Israel's military efforts that brought the Palestinians to cease their campaign of terrorism, at least for the present.

In a widely criticised move earlier this year, Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz departed from past practice and refused to extend Ya'alon's three-year term by another year.

Mofaz was conspicuously absent from the long list of personages to whom Ya'alon voiced thanks during the ceremony.

The tension between the two also led Mofaz to say in a later speech, "The fact that we did not also ways see eye-to-eye took nothing away from the high esteem in which I hold you in your loyal service and your contribution to the state."

'Without a new pullout, an eruption'

"I was given the trust and the privilege to command the IDF during three of some of the most difficult, complex, and fateful combat since the War of Independence. In this fighting, the IDF and the security forces scored many unprecedended achievements," Ya'alon told the ceremony.

"There is no doubt in my heart that the military achievements were what brought our enemy to the awareness, for the moment, that terrorism doesn't pay."

In the interview, published earlier on Wednesday, Ya'alon said "If there is an Israeli commitment to another move, we will gain another period of quiet."

"If not, there will be an eruption ... Terrorist attacks of all types: shooting, bombs, suicide bombers, mortars, Qassam rockets." Without an additional withdrawal, "there is a high probability of a second war of terror," which will begin in the West Bank.

Asked whether Ya'alon intended to say that, following the disengagement, Kfar Sava's situation will be like Sderot's today, he responded: "And Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, too. There will be suicide bombings wherever they can perpetrate them."

Halutz, following Ya'alon's speech at the Prime Minister's Office, declared that "We must not drag the IDF into the public debate that accompanies the disengagement plan."

"Division and refusal will not be accepted, whatever their reasons."

But Halutz later indicated that the statement was not intended as a swipe at statements by Ya'alon which have been interpreted as political in content.

Ya'alon: Palestinian state will lead to war

In the interview, Ya'alon said that recent statements by Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas show that Abbas "has not given up the right of return. And this is not a symbolic right of return, but the right of return as a claim to be realized. To return to the houses, to return to the villages. The implication of this is that there will not be a Jewish state here."

Therefore, he said, the establishment of a Palestinian state will lead to war "at some stage," and such a war could be dangerous for Israel. The idea that a Palestinian state can be established by 2008, and will then produce stability, is "divorced from reality" and "dangerous," as any such state "will be a state that will try to undermine Israel."

Asked about the current situation in the PA, Ya'alon responded: "For the Palestinians it is still convenient to maintain a gang-based reality rather than a state foundation.

"When [the PA] permits Hamas to take part in the elections without abandoning its firearms, is that democracy? It's gangs. Armed gangs playing at pretend democracy," he said. "If Fatah continues to behave as it does now, Hamas will eventually take over the Gaza Strip," he added.

Regarding the IDF's plans for implementing the disengagement from Gaza, Ya'alon said that the army is preparing for the possibility of entering Khan Yunis "if there is shooting from there" during the withdrawal. The disengagement, he continued, will not create a "situation of stability." Therefore, "I do not rule out" the possibility that the army will return to the Gaza Strip at some point.

Ya'alon said it is impossible to know how long the disengagement will take. "The question is whether we evacuate 8,000 residents or 20,000 Israeli citizens or maybe 50,000. If you evacuate 8,000, it could last three weeks. If you have to evacuate more, it could take longer." In other words, he said, it is too soon to talk about the withdrawal as a fait accompli. "If and when we complete the move, we will talk about a fait accompli."

Asked for his views on the general concept of two states for two peoples, he said: "In the present reality, I see difficulty in producing a stable situation of end-of-conflict within that paradigm." A two-state solution, he continued, is simply "not relevant. It is a story that the Western world tells with Western eyes. And that story does not comprehend the scale of the gap and the scale of the problem. We, too, are sweeping it under the carpet."

Asked whether he fears for Israel's existence, Ya'alon responded: "A combination of terrorism and demography, with question marks among us about the rightness of our way, are a recipe for a situation in which there will not be a Jewish state here in the end."

Regarding the army that he leaves behind, Ya'alon said he was concerned about the existence of a "criminal subculture" in the army that has even reached senior officers and become a "malignant disease."